Back to The Future – Reconstruction of Anatolian Carpets From Renaissance Paintings

National Arts Club
15 Gramercy Park South (E 20th St), NYC
Doors open at 6:00 PM.
The meeting will begin at 6:45.
Business attire, please,
with a jacket for the gentlemen.

Renaissance painters depicted some of the most beautiful Anatolian carpets. These wonderful carpets are now lost to our time. Through research and historical comparisons we have been able to reconstruct the carpet designs from three famous renaissance paintings by Vittorio Ghirlandaio, Piero della Francesca and Lorenzo Lotto.

Using the original knotting technique these carpets have been rewoven true to scale and provide a new visual and aesthetic experience. This methodology also answers several questions about the way the artists painted them and the importance of the carpets in the overall painting’s composition and color scheme.

Ali Riza Tuna was born in Istanbul and educated as an engineer in France. Since 1980 he has been passionate about Anatolian textiles, not only as a collector but also as independent researcher and lecturer.

Papers and Lectures:
– Turcoman Pattern Designs on a Newly Discovered 18th Century Ushak Carpet, International Conference on Oriental Carpets, Hamburg 1993
– Turkmen Based Designs in Historical Anatolian Carpets, Second Turkish Carpet Congress, Istanbul 1994
– A Structural Study of Ottoman Carpets in Transylvanian Churches, International Conference on Oriental Carpets, Istanbul 2007; published in Oriental Carpet and Textiles Studies Volume VII, co-authored with Stefano Ionescu
– Back to the Future – Reconstruction of Anatolian Carpets from Renaissance Paintings, International Conference on Oriental Carpets, Stockholm, 2011 and Volkmanntreffen, Berlin 2012
– contributor to: Antique Ottoman Rugs in Transylvania, by Stefano Ionescu, 2007
– exhibited in: Kultkelim, German Textile Museum, Krefeld 2003
– exhibited in: KILIM, Kaiserslautern Museum 2004
– exhibited in: Weaving Heritage of Anatolia – From Turkish Private Collections, International Conference on Oriental Carpets, Istanbul 2007
–exhibited in: Holbein Carpet Exhibition, Islamisches Museum, Berlin 2007